Author Doris Brandes celebrates the history of artists living and creating in the Delaware River region.
By: Christian Kirkpatrick
Homeowners often complain they don’t have enough space. In the case of Doris Brandes, it’s not enough walls. The walls she has are just about filled.
Ms. Brandes is a working artist, as well as a promoter and friend of artists for miles around her New Hope, Pa., home. Her walls are a scrapbook of her life and career as well as a directory of artists whose works have intrigued her.
One such work, a recent gift, leans against the crowded wall of her upstairs hall. Where can she hang it?
Her office, bedroom, studio, bathrooms and even her laundry room are already filled with artwork. A quick survey of her living room reveals two-dozen paintings and sculptures and this count does not include embroidered and silk-screened pillows and small objets d’art.
Each piece has a history. One is by a beloved art teacher; another, by Tom Birkner, a local painter who is now making a name for himself in Milan, Italy. Ms. Brandes bought an oil pastel by the internationally renowned Vaclav Vytlaschil at an auction in Nantucket, and found a brooding portrait of Rembrandt by Bucks County artist Charles Welles in a gallery in Princeton.
There are sculptures by her late husband, Bjorn Polfelt, and a ceramic wedding cake that her daughter, Karen Spiro, made to celebrate Ms. Brandes’ marriage to him. Another daughter, Amy Spiro, is represented by an oil painting Ms. Brandes made of her when she was a 2-year-old cherub.
Ms. Brandes received a bachelor’s degree from the Pratt Institute and studied for two years at the Art Students League of New York. She is a graphic artist, designer and printmaker. Many of her paintings and works in mixed media hang or, in the case of her pillows, lie throughout her house.
Most numerous are the romantic collages she has created from old family photographs, many of people she cannot identify. She photo transfers these images onto fabric and then writes bits of interesting stories around them. Often she embroiders the works as well. The result looks something like a diary with pictures, but in fabric.
Ms. Brandes moved to New Hope 16 years ago. She had been looking for a smallish house close to the heart of town and to the river and canal, but away from tourist traffic. What she bought was the kind of place only a far-seeing artist and a hopeful real estate agent could envision. A narrow, two-story structure tucked off the bustling Main Street, it had been divided into two apartments, each with tiny, dark rooms and slovenly renters. When she first toured it, Ms. Brandes had to step across the clothes and personal effects that were strewn across the floors, and just to add the crowning touch the man who led her through was a sheriff with handcuffs dangling from his back pocket. Nevertheless, when nothing else in the area seemed to suit her, she returned to take a second, more thoughtful look.
This time she saw its possibilities. This could be everything she wanted, if she were to make some changes. So she set to work.
To bring in light and improve traffic flow, she added two sets of bay windows downstairs, walled off an unnecessary door in the dining room, removed partitions in the kitchen, and cut a large portion out of the wall separating the kitchen and dining room. She built shelves into the nearly closetless kitchen and added racks for pots and glasses. She had central air conditioning installed and added a back deck, both for pleasure and to do away with the small bit of lawn that accompanied the house. No more mowing for her.
Throughout the house, she removed three layers of what she calls "motel carpeting." Her late husband refinished the hardwood floors in the living room. New wooden floors in her kitchen had to be professionally installed. The originals were rotten. In what had been the upstairs apartment, she removed appliances from the kitchen but retained the cabinets and sink. With the addition of a large window that gets the northern light, this room became a delightful studio.
The two upstairs bedrooms were combined into one large bedroom. The smaller room became a dressing area, with walls that she covered in fabric. She had two walls of this area converted into fabric-covered closets. "I never have to throw out any of my clothes," jokes Ms. Brandes as she stands before the phalanx of doors and drawers.
Now, after two waves of renovations, Ms. Brandes has an airy, light-filled house in a town she loves and that loves her.
A member or consultant for countless local organizations, Ms. Brandes has participated in this community as an artist, a writer and a promoter of art and artists. She has exhibited extensively more than 30 solo and invited exhibitions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. She has been a trustee of the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pa., since 1987, and was the founding president of Artsbridge, a 700-member organization for artists in Bucks and Hunterdon counties. Since 1994, her feature articles on local artists have appeared in The New Hope Gazette, and she continues to write about art in Art Matters, a monthly publication she founded and edited from 1981 through 1993. In 1999, the Pennsylvania Press Club awarded her a first prize for feature reporting.
Her most recent project is a tribute to the local artists she has championed and cheered. Titled Artists of the River Towns: Their Works and Their Stories (RiverArts Press, $15), the 114-page, full-color book contains profiles of 50 artists living between Trenton and Frenchtown on the New Jersey side of the Delaware River and between Yardley and Upper Black Eddy on the Pennsylvania side. Each chapter contains a photograph of the artist and a sample of his or her work. The artists represent a cross section of the arts practiced in the area. They work in oils, acrylics, watercolors, aquatint, mixed media, pastels, tile, wood, bronze and other metals.
Much has been written about the Impressionists who lived in the New Hope area during the first half of the 20th century and about certain other artists who followed them. This, however, is possibly the first book written about living artists in the area.
Three more volumes of 50 artists each are being planned. Writing these books has been an absorbing an act of love, a chance to provide a lasting record of the artists that make her corner of the world vibrant. But Ms. Brandes does not need books to appreciate the work of local artists. She needs only to look at the walls of her New Hope home.
Artists of the River Towns: Their Works and Their Stories is available at bookstores and galleries in near New Hope, Pa., and Lambertville, or by mail through River Arts Press, 10 W. Randolph St., New Hope, PA 18938 ($19, including shipping and handling). On the Web: www.riverartspress.com